Using Knoppix 3.4 on an Acer Travelmate 663LMi, I cannot get the broadcom ethernet LAN to work. It is recognized at boot. I use the nodhcp cheatcode and then set up the card with knoppix network config.

lspci shows:

Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401 100Base-T (rev 01)

dmesg shows (eth0 is a centrino wireless card which I don't use at the moment.):

b44: eth1: Link is down.
b44: eth1: Link is up at 10 Mbps, half duplex.
b44: eth1: Flow control is off for TX and off for RX.


ifconfig eth1 shows:

eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:C0:9F:35:74:EB
inet addr:164.15.134.161 Bcast:164.15.134.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:33 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:2112 (2.0 KiB)
Interrupt:11

But when I try to ping the machine next to mine, I get no response whatsoever, no error messages either. I can see the LAN interface pinging (light flashing).

Mepis uses the bcm4400 driver from broadcom, not the b44 kernel driver, and it works perfectly. However, I had the impression that others managed to get the b44 driver to work. I have tried booting knoppix with nosmp and noacpi, but this didn't change anything.

Any hints ?